Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Addresses Some Problems, Hits New Snags

The organizers of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon promised to remedy some of the problems runners experienced in years past. But even after adding mile markers and race clocks, runners had some gripes to report to Competitor Group Inc., which put together the race.

“We’ve apologized to runners for any difficulty in retrieving their belongings,” said Dan Cruz, a spokesman for CGI. “We had hoped that our system would be adequate this year to accommodate 30,000 runners, but we know we came up short of expectations.”

Experienced runners suggest that the bag drop-off should be organized by bib number, not by last name, to avoid sorting bags by corral and to move the buses so they are not quite as close to the starting corrals, which in this case resulted in excessive congestion.

For 2014, CGI will rely on UPS to facilitate the gear check. “One of the biggest problems with the system last weekend was the use of school buses to transport the gear check bags from the start to the finish. However, UPS trucks are what we use to implement gear check in other markets and create a much more efficient process for retrieving bags at the finish line,” Cruz said.